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.I don’t think—PRESIDENT : That would shut them up.HALDEMAN: Cade won’t do anything against innocent citizens.PRESIDENT: Innocent.[Laughter]HALDEMAN: Part of the thing.His oath.Can’t touch them.PRESIDENT: Well, that’s my luck.A [expletive deleted] vampire with a conscience.—Partial transcript of the so-called 18½ minute gap in the tape of a meeting between H.R.Haldeman and President Richard M.Nixon, June 20, 1972THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.Nobody goes into the Oval Office expecting to get a lot of sleep on the job.Samuel Curtis’s aides woke him in the middle of the night two or three times a week, minimum.A year into his presidency, Curtis had gotten used to it.He could switch off like a light now.Order an air strike, back to sleep.No problem.Except when Cade was involved.The last time Cade asked for a meeting, a little girl in Nevada was saying terrible things in a dead language.Less than a week later, Curtis had to order an entire town sterilized—burning every house and building to the ground, along with anyone and anything inside.That still kept him up some nights.Curtis had been in politics his whole adult life before he ran for president.He’d seen every variety of human need, greed and weakness.He thought he was beyond surprise.Then, on his inauguration day, he met with his predecessor, an overgrown frat boy with a mile-wide mean streak.“I’ve got something to give you,” the former president had said.Privately, Curtis thought two wars in the Middle East and an economy that resembled a bounced check were enough.There was no affection between the two men.It had been an ugly campaign.Curtis had been compared to the Antichrist.More than once.But he kept his mouth shut as his predecessor passed him a folded piece of paper: the daily launch codes for America’s nuclear missiles.A seemingly random set of numbers that could end all life on Earth if spoken, like magic words.Curtis put them in his suit jacket pocket.He could have sworn he felt them there after he took his hand away.Curtis watched as the former president opened a small safe behind a portrait of Kennedy on the wall.Inside was a wooden box.He took a key from a lanyard around his neck and opened it.Inside the box was a small, leather satchel, worn and shiny with age.He showed it to Curtis, then handed him the key.“You don’t want to lose either of those,” his predecessor said.He seemed more relieved to be rid of the key than the nuclear codes.Curtis met Cade in person later that night, and realized why.President Curtis thought of that moment now, as he checked the clock.3:17 a.m.Nuclear war, the president could comprehend.As awful as it was, it fit within the horrors he could accept.He could rationalize it.What Cade brought him from out of the dark.there was nothing there to bargain with, nothing to negotiate.It was, for the most part, entirely out of his control.That frightened him, every time.You wanted the job, the president told himself.So get to work.EACH PRESIDENT DEALT with Cade differently—brought a different group inside the knowledge of his existence.FDR didn’t bother telling Truman, but Harry Hopkins, the head of the WPA, sat in on every meeting.JFK had Cade communicate through his brother, and a few other trusted aides.LBJ met with him alone, but he was the exception.More and more, it was an entire committee who sat with the president when he met with Cade.Curtis’s group was called the Special Security Council.They met in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center under the East Wing of the White House.Most people knew it by the name made famous in spy movies and on TV: the Bunker.But that was the movies.In the White House, everyone called it by its acronym: PEOC, or P-OCK.After 9/11, P-OCK was retrofitted—dug deeper into the earth, made more spacious and wired with high-capacity communications lines.But one thing didn’t change: a hidden door that led to a tunnel called a “disused gas main” on the White House’s Environmental Impact Statement.The tunnel led all the way back to the Reliquary.It had been Cade’s pathway to the White House since 1960.Only the president, his liaison and Cade knew about that tunnel.To the Secret Service, it always looked like Cade and his handlers were simply there when the president arrived.Privately, it drove them nuts.Inside, P-OCK didn’t look too dramatic.The main chamber was a regular-sized conference room, just like you’d find in a better hotel.Still, Zach was in awe as soon as he emerged from the tunnel.Griff noticed.“You might want to close your mouth before you start catching flies,” he said as he sat down heavily in a chair.Zach shrugged, trying to recapture a little cool.“I’ve never been in here before,” he said.Griff only grunted in response.Zach thought he looked a bit grayer than usual.Probably past his bedtime.The double doors opened, and a man wearing a black suit and an earpiece came in.He scowled at the three of them, but waved an all-clear.President Curtis entered.He was tall and slim.Despite the hour, he was fully dressed and shaved.Zach knew the protection detail had code-named him “Sinatra,” because he always seemed to be wearing a tux, no matter what his actual outfit, no matter what the time of day.It was one reason Zach always insisted on wearing a suit.Curtis was followed by another agent, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and, finally, by Vice President Lester Wyman—a small, pale Smurf of a man.Wyman was already scowling.This didn’t surprise Zach.Wyman was always pissed off about something.The veep was selected as a concession to the values voters.He’d been in the Senate for years before Sam Curtis—most of that time railing about profanity in movies and violent video games—and was the freshman senator’s mentor
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